How Mendix Shortens Project Durations: Part 1 – Testing Efficiencies

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While entering durations and work estimates in your project plan, you will most likely find your project timeline doubled in size given the above levels of testing required when following the standard SDLC. Relief, however, is only a few mouse clicks away. The Mendix Business Modeler’s consistency checker virtually eliminates four of these testing cycles!

Real-Time Error Checking

The Business Modeler provides a real-time error checker which verifies the completeness and consistency of your entire project, i.e. the database schema with its associated forms and business logic. Double clicking on a warning within the viewer brings you to the exact location within your project to fix the given issue and provides suggestions and even auto-fix options. No broken links, infinite loops, missing images, etc. Mendix Business Modeler’s consistency checker guarantees that your project is deployed without any technical errors.

Change Request? No problem

We pride ourselves on agility and flexibility. If you make a change to your data model such as altering the name of an attribute (aka a column within a table), this modification is automatically persisted within your forms and business logic. Regression testing is therefore eliminated! Performance Testing (Load Testing, Stress Testing, Configuration Testing, etc.) is not necessary due Mendix’s optimized queries and extensive performance upgrades (like automatic gzipping of static content such as .html, .js, and .css files to allow faster response times for low-bandwidth connections).

In the event that Java actions are used (if custom Java code is chosen for integration with existing infrastructure components versus web services), traditional testing methods apply to Java code. The Mendix Business Modeler integrates directly with Eclipse and allows testing to be completed during development, not postponed until the end of the project lifecycle.

Satisfied Customers

Of course you will need to confirm your back-end systems are working as expected (Integration Testing). Otherwise your focus will turn to Functional Testing and User Acceptance Testing, i.e. making your end users happy! But even these testing cycles are minimized due to the fact that with agile development end users are either directly involved or indirectly offer continuous feedback so that the end product is a custom fit. Because your project is a visual model, documentation is automatically created, defining your entire technical and functional specifications! Detailed requirements specs are not a necessity; requirements are defined throughout the process allowing for adoption to changing business processes and future-proofing your application. Non-technical users will finally be provided with transparency into business logic! Documentation is reduced to use cases which services the end users needs and defines the application flow.

About Mendix

This is true Justine, but I’ve always thought that Mendix could go a lot further in self-testing than it actually does. It know a lot more about the application than most development environments, so it should be able to do functional self-tests, auto-generate test data, provide automated regression test facilities etc.